Gary Neville claims it ‘feels like the end’ for Ten Hag after ‘dumping’ Man Utd pair for Villa clash
Gary Neville believes bums will be squeaking in the Manchester United boardroom on Sunday afternoon as they take on Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe and co praying they won’t be forced to make a decision over Erik ten Hag just yet.
Manchester United’s abysmal performance against Tottenham Hotspur last weekend and awful defending in a 3-3 draw against Porto in midweek – which United led 2-0 only to have have to come from behind in the last minute to salvage a point – have ratcheted up the pressure on ten Hag, who was widely expected to be dismissed at the end of last season only to be handed a reprieve.
Neville said on Sky Sports: “We always knows that obviously clubs do re-assess during international breaks, and anybody who was in Old Trafford last week – I don’t think you even needed to be in the stadium – recognised that it felt like a monumental day.
“There’s going to have to be a serious reverse in performance, and this game today, I always think United struggle against any team that are remotely organised and know what they’re doing, and this Villa side definitely know what they’re doing.
“[There will be] a bit of fear today, I would imagine, inside that Manchester United boardroom that basically the situation [may] accelerate out of their control. They’ll obviously want to try and keep calm, they’ll want to try and keep Erik ten Hag in for the season, but sometimes these things get taken out of your hand.”
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Neville was also surprised to see ten Hag go with Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans as his starting centre-back duo against Aston Villa, saying: “I actually at one point thought Gary and Phil Neville might be the full-backs!
“I must admit, if you think about the fact that Manchester United have five or six centre-backs, if you’d said to me five or six weeks ago that we’d end up with Jonny Evans and Harry Maguire at centre-back…Jonny Evans has been a fantastic centre-back, Harry Maguire is a fantastic centre-back still … but I would have said there must be four injuries to the others.
“The fact de Ligt and Martinez have been dumped to the bench…you can’t argue with the decision from a footballing perspective, because if you watch the goals United conceded in Porto, they were horrific from de Ligt and Martinez’s point of view.
“But just optically, looking at it from the point of view of the plan…the plan was this season for Erik ten Hag to establish his style of play and shift the team up the pitch, make them more aggressive, make them more in the style he wanted to implement.
“United are now going to be camped on the edge of their box with Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans. This is not the plan.
“For me it feels a little bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, a little bit like when a manager is struggling at the end of his tenure when they throw the young players in and are like ‘I’m going to pick the players I like and the ones I can trust and the ones that are training every day’. It feels a little bit like that today.
“But United have got results when Erik ten Hag’s needed it in the past and we’ll see what happens in the next couple of hours.”
